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Erotic Stories

Manuel Teixeira-Gomes

Translated by Alison Aiken

Cover Picture of Erotic Stories
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  • The first tale in this classic collection evokes, not Portugal, but turn-of-century Amsterdam, a city bound up in its wealth and its moral paradoxes. These are the paradoxes of Manuel Teixeira-Gomes' characters, too, the gap between seeming and being, between desire and its various objects.


    A young man boasts of his sexual exploits; but the voice that tells the Erotic Stories belongs to a man reduced (if not diminished) by years and responsibilities. The teller of 'Dead Woman's Grotto' embodies all that the author despises: lack of moral fibre, abuse of position. Sardonic and even amused at the self-infatuation of the youthful lover, the author looks on. It is the laissez-faire attitude to affairs that fascinates and disturbs us: circumstances control the protagonists who, under a libidinal spell, have no will of their own. Their actions and inactions equally reveal immorality. Teixeira-Gomes's women, on the other hand, often strive to give direction to their lives.


    ALISON AIKEN, granddaughter of the American poet Conrad Aiken and niece of the children's author Joan Aiken, holds a PhD in Portuguese literature and has been a freelance translator for twenty years.


    Manuel Teixeira-Gomes
    MANUEL TEIXEIRA-GOMES (1860-1941) spent his youth as 'the dandy, the cynic, the rake' of his story 'The Gypsy'. He represented Portugal in London after the republican revolution of 1910 and negotiated Portugal's entry into World War I. After a spell in prison he returned to diplomacy in Madrid and London. In ... read more
    Alison Aiken
    Alison Aiken, granddaughter of the American poet Conrad Aiken and niece of the children's author Joan Aiken, holds a PhD in Portuguese literature and has been a freelance translator for twenty years. ... read more
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